France took the lead in colonizing the Upper Midwest region. From the
early sixteenth century on, French soldiers, missionaries and fur traders left their
slight mark upon the St. Lawrence valley, the upper Great Lakes and points west.
For the early French explorers, the more continent they discovered the more their
hopes were frustrated. They had hoped that the vast St. Lawrence-Great Lakes
waterway was part of a Northwest Passage to the wealth of the Orient. They were
eager to hear word of salt water and strange people to the west. For example, Jean
Nicolet prepared for his 1634 trip to Green Bay by carrying along an elaborate
robe of China damask to properly impress the oriental merchants he expected to
meet. Such false hopes gave way to systematic exploration of western lands and
peoples, yielding the outlines of a future empire linking the St. Lawrence with the
Mississippi and the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico. The French presence
was asserted by a network of forts, trading posts and missions dotting the lake and
river routes traversing the continental interior. By the middle of the eighteenth
century, settled populations were beginning to take hold at Detroit and Green Bay
and in what was called the Illinois country. The settlements had a distinctive
shape; like those long established in the Quebec area, they were defined by their
dependence upon riverine commerce. They were thickly clustered along the
river's edge, on long and thin lots running back into the nearby hinterland.

The great currency of the French empire in North America was, however,
the fur trade, carried out at great distances in partnership with Indian allies.
Canoes were used to float the furs down a series of waterways from the far
northwest of present-day Canada, to the upper Great Lakes, up the Ottawa River to
Montreal. A series of wars between France and England culminated in a treaty in
1763 by which France ceded away all claim to the area east of the Mississippi.
The area west of that river, after a few decades under Spanish control, was sold by
France to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. A substantial part
of the future state of Minnesota was included in that transaction.

The French remained influential in the upper Great Lakes region as long as
the region made its living from the fur trade. By the third decade of the
nineteenth century, the flood of incoming American farmers overwhelmed the fur
trade and the slight but extensive French presence. The French presence, like the
Indian presence, persists in regional place names (e.g., Prairie du Chien, in
Wisconsin, or Lac qui Parle, in Minnesota).

by Clarence Mondale, Emeritus Professor of American Civilization, The George Washington University, Summer, 1998